Joanna Godden eBook

Sec.3

In the fall of the next year, she found that once
again she had something to engross her outside Ansdore.
Ellen was to leave school that Christmas. The
little sister was now seventeen, and endowed with all
the grace; and learning that forty pounds a term can
buy. During the last year she and Joanna had
seen comparatively little of each other. She had
received one or two invitations from her school friends
to spend her holidays with them—­a fine
testimonial, thought Joanna, to her manners and accomplishments—­and
her sister had been only too glad that she should
go, that she should be put out of the shadow of a grief
which had grown too black even for her sentimental
schoolgirl sympathy, so gushing and caressing, in
the first weeks of her poor Joanna’s mourning.

But things were different now—­Martin’s
memory was laid. She told herself that it was
because she was too busy that she had not gone as
usual to the Harvest Festival at New Romney, to sing
hymns beside the pillar marked with the old floods.
She was beginning to forget. She could think
and she could love. She longed to have Ellen back
again, to love and spoil and chasten. She was
glad that she was leaving school, and would make no
fugitive visit to Ansdore. Immediately her mind
leapt to preparations—­her sister was too
big to sleep any more in the little bed at the foot
of her own, she must have a new bed ... and suddenly
Joanna thought of a new room, a project which would
mop up all her overflowing energies for the next month.

It should be a surprise for Ellen. She sent for
painters and paper-hangers, and chose a wonderful
new wall-paper of climbing chrysanthemums, rose and
blue in colour, and tied with large bows of gold ribbon—­real,
shining gold. The paint she chose was a delicate
fawn, picked out with rose and blue. She bought
yards of flowered cretonne for the bed and window
curtains, and had the mahogany furniture moved in
from the spare bedroom. The carpet she bought
brand new—­it was a sea of stormy crimson,
with fawn-coloured islands rioted over with roses
and blue tulips. Joanna had never enjoyed herself
so much since she lost Martin, as she did now, choosing
all the rich colours, and splendid solid furniture.
The room cost her nearly forty pounds, for she had
to buy new furniture for the spare bedroom, having
given Ellen the mahogany.

As a final touch she hung the walls with pictures.
There was a large photograph of Ventnor church, Isle
of Wight, and another of Furness Abbey in an Oxford
frame; there was “Don’t Touch” and
“Mother’s Boy” from “Pears’
Christmas Annual,” and two texts, properly expounded
with robins. To crown all, there was her father’s
certificate of enrolment in the Ancient Order of Buffaloes,
sacrificed from her own room, and hung proudly in
the place of honour over Ellen’s bed.